The processor has been upgraded from a 700 MHz 32-bit ARM single core Broadcom BCM2835 to a newer 900 MHz ARM 32-bit quad core Broadcom BCM2836. The amount of RAM has also jumped, from 256 MB in the original B and 512 MB in the B+, to a whole 1 GB in the 2 B.

The external dimensions of the 2 hasn’t changed much from the B+. It still has the same four USB ports, HDMI out, Micro USB power port, and 40 General Purpose Input/Output (GPIO) Pins.

Performance Boosts

The hardware upgrades bring some serious performance boosts to the Raspberry Pi. In an interview with The Register, the head of the Raspberry Pi Foundation, Ebon Upton, claims that they’re now making “a useable PC”.

The Raspberry Pi Foundation claims on their site that the 6x performance increase is “a typical figure for a multi-threaded CPU benchmark like SysBench”. For other tests the increase is as low as 1.5x — in “single-threaded CPU benchmarks” — and as high as 20x — in “NEON-enabled multicore video codecs” benchmarks.

What ever way you look at it, the new combination of a faster processor, three more cores and double the RAM is going to make it noticeably faster in everyday use, and allow it to run far more intensive applications.

The exact specifics of how this will work are yet to be announced. You can sign up for the Windows Developer Program to be kept up to date or rest easy knowing that we will cover installing Windows 10 on a Raspberry Pi as soon as we’re able.

Getting a Piece of Pi

100,000 Raspberry Pi 2 have been released for sale today. You can expect them to fly out the door. –I’ve already ordered mine. If you’re interested in buying one too, check out the Raspberry Pi site for links to the foundation’s partner retailers.